Silent Hill: A Single Drop of Poison
by Mattias St. Lunas
Summary: A single drop of poison can make a man's mind a wonderfully dreadful place...
1. The Coming of the Storm

-Disclaimer: I do not own the Konami franchise of Silent Hill. Though none of the characters in this story are from past Silent Hills, the game theme itself is copyright and trademark of Konami and its subsidiaries. Thank you, and do read and review!-  
  
-- Flashback/Disembodied Voices  
  
----------------------------------------------------  
  
Leon gasped for air as he was hefted into the large red-and-white ambulance, four men in light blue attire staring down at him as if he was wearing a leech on his face. They mumbled among themselves -- at least, Leon heard it as mumbling. It was hard to tell, everything seemed to be muffled, as if he was listening to a conversation through a thick wall.  
  
Leon! LEON, GET AWAY FROM ME!  
  
One of the paramedics grabbed the handles of a defribulator, and began to rub them together. More mumbling, and then the man placed the two pads against Leon's chest. There was a muffled shout of "Clear!", and a hard surge of electricity went through Leon's chest. Why were they shocking him if he was awake, looking up at them all?  
  
N-now, now Leon...let's talk about this!  
  
The paramedic warmed up the defribulator again, but Leon didn't have time to find out what it would feel like to be shocked twice. He was suddenly blown over by a wave of coldness, and was instantly thrown into a coma-like sleep. All of the paramedics knew none the wiser, and were still trying to revive the unconcious and close-to-death Leon Owens.  
  
-----  
  
Dusty light poured in through the hospital window, streaming over Leon's stark white face. He groaned, his eyes fluttering open to the morning sun. The light brushed over his bed and hit against the yellowed wall behind him, the tiles seeming to be old and discolored from time and, in places, some iodine. Slowly, Leon began to stand up, taking time to let out a long, loud yawn. Slowly, he stared around the room, and wrinkled his nose in disgust. "You think they'd keep a hospital from looking so old and mildewy," he said softly as he stood up, having struggled for the words to describe the place he was in.  
  
Taking staggering steps, Leon made his way toward the bathroom, which was hidden behind a door on the left side of the room. Stepping in, he groaned as he situated himself in front and above the toilet, and unzipped his pants' fly.  
  
Finishing his business, Leon groggily slipped back outside the bathroom, letting his eyes get a good look around. The hospital looked nothing like the hospital he had worked at -- the room lay out was totally different, and the room just looked far from kept up. The ceiling, made of drop-in drywall-like material, was cracked and stained with unidentifiable liquids. The floor was old and stained, and the tile was even cracked in a few places, leaving room to see the dried old grout and putty underneath. The hospital beds were laid out five in a row, each separated by discolored curtains on rusty metal rings, all hanging from the ceiling on old decrepit runners.  
  
"This place should be quarrantined," Leon said to himself as he drunkenly staggered from the room and into the hallway. He wanted some answers as to where he was. Stepping into the corridor, he expected to see nurses busy with their morning rounds, but there was no movement. There was no telltale squeaking of cart wheels that needed oil, there was no shuffling of the slippers patients wore so their feet wouldn't get cold. There was no sound at all, except for Leon's own breathing.  
  
Almost having to force his tired body to move, Leon began to trudge down the hallway, following the large sign that read "Stairs." The sign itself was as bad as the rest of the hospital, one of the bolts holding the sign in its placard having disappeared, so the sign hung at a fourty-five degree angle from the wall it was attached to. Sighing, Leon listened absently to his boots thud against the old tile flooring, nearing the stairwell door with every stride of his long legs.  
  
Leon placed his hand on the doorknob that was attached to the door labeled "Stairs" in bright yellow letters, and turned the rusted brass knob. The door squeaked open, revealing a dingy stairwell that reeked of piss and blood. Sighing, Leon took a deep breath and quickly ran down the stairs until he found the first floor, which was two floors below where he started. Pushing through that door, he found himself in the reception area, which was, as the rest of the hospital, totally empty.  
  
The reception area's couches were askew, with cushions missing or torn up. On the table, shredded magazines were strewn across the wooden surface, random words torn from articles that meant nothing more than what the words meant themselves. The reception desk was warped and rotted, though just barely, and had just a few pieces of paper on it. Leon walked over to look, but all the papers were blank check-in slips, nothing more.  
  
Growling lowly, Leon made his way to the front doors, and pushed them open. The hinges screamed out in their high-pitched squeal, and more of that dusty-colored sunlight streamed down and onto Leon's body. A small smile tugging at his lips, he made his first steps outside, the air smelling of snow and exhaust fumes. Stepping farther from his perch on the stairs of the hospital, he made his way into the front courtyard area, and turned around, looking up at the sign on the medical facility.  
  
"Brookhaven Hospital, eh? Not any place I've ever heard of," stated Leon, speaking to no one but himself, but acting as if he was preaching to a crowd. Turning on his heel, the man saw a small brochure tacked to the gate that was in front of Brookhaven's main walkway. Striding over to it nonchalantly, he slipped it from its spot and read the front. In a cheery font, the brochure nearly screamed to him.  
  
-Welcome to Silent Hill! A Restful, Lakeside Resort!- 


	2. The Cancer is Nigh

Fog seemed to barrel in on the town of Silent Hill like a moth to the flame of a candle. Leon already had found the place a bit unnerving by it's lack of noise, but with the fog, the town was becoming more warped by the second.  
  
Taking a metaphorical and physical step forward, Leon Owens pushed the gate that sat in front of Brookhaven open, and stepped out onto the placid street. There were no cars, parked or driving, where he was, nor were there any people around. This town was something of a paradox to Leon as he slowly made his way toward the other side of the street. As he walked, he unfurled the Silent Hill brochure, but instead of finding the regular chatter you would find in a brochure, the whole back of the pamphlet was a map of the town.  
  
Completely unfolding the rigid, yellowed paper, Leon found Brookhaven on the map. Thumbing the corner of the map, he pulled the one thing he carried with him at all times out -- his ball-point pen. Pressing down on the thumb button at the top of the blue pen (the writing on the side advertised some pharmacy that had supplied his place of work with medicine), and circled Brookhaven Hospital on the map. In the back of his mind, he had a notion that he would be returning sometime soon to this place.  
  
Leon clicked the button on the pen again, retracting the writing point. He traced a line with the tip of the pen along the roadway, and found that there was one other place circled on the map, even though he hadn't even brought his pen near it -- King Cemetary, five blocks north of where he was. Leon heaved a sigh, folded the map back up, and stuck it in his pocket with his pen. "Why a cemetary?" he asked the fog as he began to walk forward. His light blue jeans swayed against his legs as he walked, making creases and ultimately just soaking up moisture from the air around him.  
  
Brushing a few stray locks of his dark red chin-length hair from his face, Leon looked around him in a search for some other living being. Yet, there were no people in this town, it seemed, except for him. When this thought hit him, Leon did a full-body shiver, a shudder emanating from his throat. Then, thinking back on this idea, Leon just laughed it off. "It is impossible," said the man as he kept walking, "to be in a town as large as the map showed, and be the only person here."  
  
-----  
  
Five blocks passed rather quickly. Soon, through the dense fog (it seemed to be thickening) Leon could see the faint outlines of grave markers and ghastly-shaped trees. The perimiter of the King Graveyard was outlined with a black, wrought-iron fence with small, triangular-shaped spearheads on each of the fenceposts. Making his way around this fence, Leon found the gated entranceway, and with tense muscles, he pushed the gate forward, the hinges squeaking in his arrival.  
  
"Ok, Leon, get a hold of yourself. It's just a graveyard. You've seen cadavers before, so headstones should be nothing to you." The man tried to comfort himself as he set foot inside the grassy plot of land, walking over bump and valley that the ground created, more than likely from the dirt that had been dug out and re-packed into the ground for burials.  
  
As Leon made his way about the graveyard, wondering why he had come here, there came a faint static sound from behind one of the far headstones. Taking time to gulp down a whimper of fright, the man slowly inched toward the grave marker near the corner that was shadowed by the monstrous oak trees and dense shrubbery. Putting his shaky hands on the top of the stone monument, Leon leaned over and came face to face with a small, pocket-sized radio. The dial lights on the red radio were turned on, blazing an ethereal blue, and the static light was flashing its caution yellow. Reaching over, Leon grabbed the plastic box and pulled it up. Turning it over, he began to search for an off switch when he noticed that the battery case was open, and there were no batteries within the radio.  
  
Leon supressed another whimper of fear, and slowly turned the radio back over. Staring at it for a few moments, he became infatuated with the box of white noise until a low hissing sound came from behind him. Jumping a good two feet in the air, Leon turned around on his heels and began to stumble backward in the graveyard. The hissing grew louder, and Leon could see that there was a four legged.... something emerging from the bushes near where he had found the radio.  
  
His feet gave way, and Leon went tumbling down, and struck the back of his head against something hard and heavy-feeling. Grunting, the man turned over to find a wrought-iron fence spike laying on the ground in a haphazard place. Rubbing his head, Leon turned around. At that point, his jaw dropped.  
  
From the bushes had emerged quite a hideous creature. It's body was in the shape of a cat-like creature, but it had only one eye, a large one right in the middle of its forehead that glowed a horrific orange color. It's mouth, when the creature hissed, was melded to itself, so instead of having a full, open orifice, it had holes in a tight skinflap, like Swiss cheese. The creature's skin was a dullish grey-brown color, and seemed to shimmer with a liquid that Leon didn't want to identify. Its paws were more like misshapen hooves, and it had a bloody stub for a tail.  
  
Leon yelped in horror, and groped for the fencepost behind him. Feeling his hand wrap around the cold, damp metal, he hefted it up (it was a bit on the heavy side, but he could swing it rather well) and pocketed the radio at the same time. Wrapping both hands around the shaft of the spear-like object, Leon held it defensively as the cat creature inched nearer, its malignant hissing seeming to echo in a place where no echoes should occur.  
  
Then, the creature leapt, long knife-like claws becoming present from it's paw-like appendages. Squeaking out a scream, Leon swung the iron gatepost like a bat, and managed to knock the thing off to the side of him. Bashing into a tombstone, the creature chipped the granite a bit as it fell to the ground, letting out a hissing whimper.  
  
Leon quickly jumped over to the cat-creature, and impaled it's head on the spiked end of the makeshift spear multiple times. Growling as he did, he felt the ground give way as he continued stabbing, not stopping until a goopy black blood-like substance began to run from the creature. Panting, he took a step back, and then the man ran toward the gate. Hanging from the metal exit to the graveyard was a sign that had not been there before. It was written in red ink, much like blood, and was short and slightly unnerving.  
  
-The Cancer is Nigh- 


End file.
